The Jan’25 Brent futures contract has softened from $75.30/bbl, seen at 01:10 GMT today, to $74.80/bbl (as of 10:35 GMT, time of writing). CFTC data for the week ending 19 Nov showed managed-by-money players adding 16.9mb (+7.83%) to their long positions w/w while trimming over 16.3mb (-13.9%) from their shorts w/w. This supported the speculative long:short ratio to 2.32:1.00 (from 1.85:1.00 in the previous week). Donald Trump has nominated Scott Bessent to lead the US Treasury Department, calling him “widely respected as one of the world’s most international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists” in a post on Truth Social. Bessent has advised Trump to follow a 3-3-3 policy inspired by former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe. Bessent’s three-point agenda includes cutting the budget deficit to 3% of US GDP (by 2028), spurring GDP growth of 3% through deregulation, and producing an additional 3mb/d of oil. In other news, TotalEnergies SE has stated that it will not make any new financial contributions as part of its investments in the Adani Group of companies. The French major holds a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy, now the centre of a US corruption charge against Gautam Adani, the company’s head, and others. In other news, Germany’s business morale has declined to 85.7 in November (prev: 86.5, Reuters’ poll: 86.00). Finally, at the time of writing, the Jan/Feb’25 and Jan/Jul’25 Brent futures spreads stand at $0.56/bbl and $1.80/bbl, respectively.
